I just came across this fine Beerbohm caricature, titled 'Riverside Scene. Algernon Swinburne Takes his Great New Friend Gosse to See Dante Rossetti.' I wonder why they're wearing those silly hats...
Gosse had assiduously cultivated and championed Swinburne from very early on, and was not pleased when Theodore Watts-Dunton made himself even more indispensable to the poet and became his chosen companion in the curious menage established at 2 The Pines, Putney – about which the splendidly named Mollie Panter-Downes wrote an excellent book (At The Pines, currently available on Amazon for 1p). There is also a very amusing account of a visit to The Pines written by Max Beerbohm and included in the collection And Even Now.
“. . . in the ‘Riverside Scene’ . . . the influence, the critics say, of Botticelli may be traced, if only in the conversion of top hats into those conical Florentine caps.”
ReplyDelete<Country Life, Vol. 52, 1922, page 777.
Botticelli, eh? ingenious... I guess the funny hats look a bit like those things Victorian gents used to wear in the library, along with a smoking jacket. Thanks Dave.
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